


grant that we may come again rejoicing to this season

by laughingalonewithducks



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, don't do alcohol kids, there are too many capitalised words in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3227642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingalonewithducks/pseuds/laughingalonewithducks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Luthien Incident, Melkor and Mairon get absolutely trashed together</p>
            </blockquote>





	grant that we may come again rejoicing to this season

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from a hymn to dionysus, because i like to think i'm funny
> 
> also this has been written for ages i just forgot to post it here i'm not actually starting to write again (sorry everyone who's been waiting like 2 years for me to update i'm a lazy piece of shit and i forgot where i'm going with most of them)

There was a resounding crash as Mairon dropped several barrels on the dais in front of Melkor.

"We," he announced, "are getting drunk."

Melkor blinked.

"I- yes," he allowed, looking at the empty wreckage of the throne room, "I think that would be for the best."

"Right. Grab a barrel, we’re going to your chambers."

"We have orcs for this sort of thing, you know." Melkor kicked a barrel over. It seemed suspiciously light.

"The _orcsh_ ,” Mairon said, with the sort of exaggerated pronunciation that suggested that he’d already started drinking, “are on their way with more. Much, much more. I do not plan to remember tonight,” he added, with a heavily implied _'or the past month'._

Melkor kicked the rest of the (also suspiciously light) barrels over and sent them rolling after Mairon, who fixed him with a beady eye as they rolled up the corridor.

"You’re going to ruin the mead like that."

Melkor rolled his eyes. “What do you care? You’re already half drunk.”

"…No ‘m not," Mairon said unconvincingly, fumbling open the door to Melkor’s chambers. "You didn’t trash this part of the fortress, too, did you? No? Good. I don’t drink in structurally unsound places. It’s bad for my health."

"So are elves and their loyal hell-hounds," Melkor pointed out snidely, shoving the rest of the barrels through the door after Mairon, "but you seem perfectly fine to me."

Mairon yanked him inside and shoved a tankard at him. “Shut up and drink.”

~~~

"…so I said to the elf, are you _sure_ you don’t know where Luthien went, because I asked your friend over there and _he_ said you’d been telling stories about her all evening. And _he_ says- over there, the barrels go over there, _no_ , Oagunaad, they go in _that_ corner- you know what? Your name has too many vowels in it. Report to the warg department immediately. As food.”

Mairon waved his tankard around for emphasis as the last of the orcs scuttled out of the room - probably the unfortunately named Oagunaad, Melkor decided, owing to the pure terror in its eyes, and the fact that it had left in the direction of the warg pits. Also, it was wearing a name tag that said **HELLO, MY NAME IS ‘OAGUNAAD’, HOW MAY I HELP YOU?** in block letters.

"Anyway, then he said- then he… where was I?" Mairon squinted off into the distance and waved his tankard again.

"You were telling me where you’ve been hiding for the past month," Melkor said encouragingly.

"I wasn’t _hiding_ , I was _trying to exact my revenge_.”

Melkor sat up straight and fixed Mairon with a gimlet stare, the effect of which was spoiled somewhat when he swayed drunkenly.

"…so maybe I was hiding," Mairon admitted. "But only a little. And only because being violently disemboweled would have stopped me from completing my duties as your lieutenant, and I didn’t think you would realise that."

"I wouldn’t have _disemboweled_ you. Maybe kicked you a few times.”

Mairon sniffed. “You would too. And then you would’ve pushed me into the warg pit.”

"No, I would _not_ have," Melkor insisted. "Who else would micromanage this place for me? Thuringwethil doesn’t care, and Gothmog is, well, _Gothmog_. I don’t want half my orcs dead or taking the day off.”

Mairon waved his tankard dismissively. “Whatever. Close the door, it’s getting cold.”

~~~

Melkor dropped his head on the table with a _thump_ that startled Mairon out of the pleasant pink fog he had been drinking himself into.

"Why did she have to take the _left_ one?” he complained into the heavily-scarred wood. “She couldn’t have taken the _middle_ one, oh no, she had to go and _ruin the symmetry_ while she was at it!”

Mairon reached over and refilled Melkor’s tankard. “There, there,” he said, unsympathetically. “At least she didn’t set her dog on you.”

"But it’s _lopsided_ now. I look _stupid_.”

"You always look stupid."

There was a pause as Mairon stared into his tankard and Melkor thought dark thoughts about elves.

"You’re not, though," Mairon said, abruptly.

Melkor squinted up at him from the table. “Wha’?”

"Stupid. You do stupid things, sometimes, and you look stupid, but you’re not. S’why I like you."

There was another, longer pause as Mairon continued to stare into his tankard like it held the answers to every question ever asked, and Melkor unsuccessfully tried to scrape together enough higher brain processes to determine whether or not Mairon had just insulted him.

He gave up after a while and went looking for his tankard, which had inexplicably migrated to the cabinet.

~~~

"No- no, see, if the Teleri hadn’t stopped for that last drink before they reached the bay, none of this would’ve happened," Melkor slurred, swaying dangerously.

"I don’t see your point here."

"It’s, uh. Thing. Chaos thing. Chaos theory. When a whatsit- small flappy creature. When it flaps somewhere in, like, Valinor. And then Beleriand gets a really bad storm."

Mairon squinted at him. “Osse doesn’t take flappy forms, I don’t think.”

"What- no, it’s- it’s a thing. Literary device. Metaphor."

"Oh." Mairon thought about this for a long time. "Meta for what?" he said eventually.

"What?" Melkor started to slide off his chair.

"A meta for what?"

"No, I mean- look, if the Teleri hadn’t stopped for a drink, Thingol wouldn’t’ve needed to pee when they got to the bay, and he wouldn’t’ve met Melian, and _she_ would never’ve happened. Chaos whatsit. Theory,” Melkor concluded triumphantly.

"Oh. Well, I think- I think-" Mairon stared at his empty tankard and tried valiantly to formulate a coherent thought. He gave up after a few seconds. "I think we need more alcohol," he slurred, wobbling his way over to the seriously-depleted pile of barrels the orcs had left.

After his third unsuccessful attempt to refill both their tankards, Melkor yanked the barrel out of his hands. “Yer’ wasting good mead,” he grunted, and upended the whole thing over his mouth.

"Right. Yes. That," Mairon said faintly, staring at Melkor’s bobbing throat with the sort of look sported by deer that have taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the path of a particularly large vehicle that is also particularly disinclined to stop.

Melkor drained the barrel in a matter of seconds (which should have been physically impossible, but Mairon had long since learnt to ignore little things like the laws of nature not working around Melkor) and tossed the barrel at the pile of similarly empty barrels next to the door.

"Didja see that, I think it was a record- why’re you staring. Is it the crown? It’s the crown, isn’t it."

"Um," Mairon managed, "I think I need to- ohshit."

After a while, Melkor prodded him with a toe. Mairon slid the rest of the way onto the floor, and continued to be comatose.

Melkor grunted. “Lightweight.”

~~~

"Quill, quill, ‘s here somewhere, there it is. Where’s the thing. Ink. I know I left it on the table, where’d it go, _Thuringwethil d’you know where my ink is?_ ”

Someone (presumably Thuringwethil, but you never could be sure) shrieked “ _It’s in the bottom drawer!_ ” from the opposite end of the corridor.

"Oh. Right."

~~~

Bloodcurdling screams rent the air in Angband the next morning, as Mairon woke up and discovered both his splitting hangover and the obscene scribblings Melkor had managed to draw on his face before passing out next to him.

Most of them did not come from Mairon.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like half of this was ripped straight out of good omens tbh


End file.
